UW’s Lies About Killing Animals Exposed

Earlier this year, the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), along with the Northwest Animal Rights Network and the Seattle Animal Defense League, called upon the University of Washington to end the use of live ferrets in their pediatrics residency training. Since then, over 20,000 supporters have emailed the UW, and other supporters attended a visible demonstration in front of the UW Medicine building, which garnered media coverage. We’ve got their attention, but now there’s more to the story.

Documents that have been obtained through Washington’s public records law reveal that there is more going on at UW than previously expected. The PCRM discovered that the UW was telling the public one thing, while the opposite was true. The PCRM place an ad in the school’s student newspaper, alerting students and faculty that UW has been lying about killing animals.

A faculty member at UW told the Seattle Times earlier this year that the school had stopped killing rabbits for chest tube placement training, but the documents that PCRM obtained prove otherwise. UW has also claimed that the ferrets used in pediatrics residency training are adopted out, but documents reveal that numerous ferrets have been killed in the past three years.

The lying doesn’t stop there. UW has told the public that the use of ferrets in endotracheal intubation training is necessary, but according to internal communications the head of newborn medicine reportedly stated that the use of ferrets will end “because we can’t prove that they are any better than a training manikin.”

But this really shouldn’t come as a surprise as the UW has been investigated, cited, and fined over numerous violations in their animal-based medical and research programs. For the UW, this is par for the course. Please let the UW administrators know that lying to the public is unacceptable, and that they should end the use of animals.

PCRM ad in the UW's student newspaper, The Daily

UW Fined for Monkey Deaths in Primate Research Lab

Transcript of the October 18, 2011 news broadcast on Q13 FOX

SEATTLE—

Every year, tens of thousands of monkeys are used as test subjects in labs around the country.

Schools defend such experiments as essential to the advancement of medicine. The Department of Agriculture conducts annual spot inspections of these facilities and can step in when problems are identified.

In the past five years at the University of Washington’s Primate Research Center one monkey died of malnutrition, two more were found to be kept in cages that were too small and one scientist was fined for performing an excessive number of surgeries on the same animals. The incidents were uncovered after an anonymous complaint led to a USDA investigation.

“They finally got along to levying a fine which is $10,000 and the University gets millions of dollars in research money, so this is just a little drop in their bucket,” said Rachel Bjork with Northwest Animal Rights Network. “They like to say they are doing ground breaking research. They like to say they’re saving lives but I’m trying to understand the connection between sticking coils in a monkey’s eyes and saving a human life.”

The University released a statement responding:

“The University of Washington takes great care to ensure that their animals are healthy and well-maintained. Any time there is an unexpected death of a research animal, the UW reports the incident to the USDA and provides full disclosure. Our goal is to provide advances in medical care and treatment. The USDA recently visited the UW and found no deficiencies in its animal care program.”

The USDA is also investigating Oregon Health Science University’s primate research center, and has levied similar fines against Harvard Medical School, Vanderbilt and Princeton for violations that led to animal deaths.

“To do this research, it’s wasteful and the fact of what they’re doing to these animals should be criminal,” said Bjork.

The University of Washington paid a $10,893 fine in April 2011. The USDA says if repeat violations are found in future inspections, the University could face steeper penalties.

Original story with video

Demonstration to End Use of Ferrets by UW Medicine

Last February, the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, explaining that the University of Washington (UW) is violating the federal Animal Welfare Act by using live ferrets in its pediatrics residency program. In the pediatrics residency program at the UW breathing tubes are pushed down the throats of live ferrets to teach endotracheal intubation. This painful procedure is repeated numerous times on each animal and can cause tracheal bruising and bleeding. Non-animal training methods exist, making this use of animals not only cruel but completely unnecessary.

The SimNewB, manufactured by the Norwegian firm Laerdal and developed in partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics, simulates newborn babies, and the Gaumard PREMIE Blue Simulator is designed to mimic the air way of a premature newborn. UW’s state-of-the-art Institute for Simulation and Interprofessional Studies (ISIS) owns SimNewB simulators. Both of these simulators are appropriate alternatives to using live ferrets for endotracheal intubation training.

More than 85 percent of pediatrics residency programs in the United States do not use animals. It is time for UW to join the majority. So far, responsible UW faculty and administrators have ignored pleas to change this practice. So now, the PCRM, in cooperation with the Northwest Animal Rights Network (NARN) and the Seattle Animal Defense League (SADL), is taking this message to the school’s front door.

Please join us for a demonstration to let the University of Washington know that its use of live ferrets for pediatrics residency training is cruel and unacceptable.

Thursday, October 6 10:30am – 12:00pm
1959 N.E. Pacific St. near the main entrance of the University of Washington Medical Center

View Larger Map

Please also e-mail, write, and/or call UW School of Medicine dean Paul G. Ramsey, M.D and ask him to replace the use of animals in its pediatrics residency program.

Paul G. Ramsey, M.D.
Dean, University of Washington School of Medicine
1959 NE Pacific St.
Seattle, WA 98195
E-mail: pramsey@u.washington.edu
Phone: 206-543-7718

Demonstration Against AstraZeneca

Since 1999, there has been a global mobilization against one of the world’s largest and cruelest animal abusers, Huntingdon Life Sciences. Concerned citizens, activists and animal advocates worldwide have focused their efforts on shutting down this company that undercover investigations have revealed numerous instances of animal abuse and cruelty. This Thursday (8/25) and Friday (8/26) Seattle Animal Defense League (SADL) joins the fight. Please join us as we protest against AstraZeneca, a global pharmaceutical and biologics company headquartered in London, U.K. It is the world’s seventh-largest pharmaceutical company, has operations in over 100 countries, and is one of HLS’s largest customers. There are offices for AstraZeneca in downtown Seattle.

Thursday August 25
Friday August 26
Please meet at 2:30 pm each day at Tully’s on 4th and Union in downtown Seattle for a solidarity discussion. After the discussion, we will walk over to the site and demonstrate our disgust at AstraZeneca’s support of HLS.

Please spread the word to as many people as you can. Together we can make a difference and liberate the animals imprisoned within its walls.

For more information please visit: http://www.shac.net/AZAction/takeaction/index.html

PETA Targets UW with Anti-Vivisection Billboards

PETA takes vivisectors to task in a new aggressive ad campaign within Seattle. The ads were in response to the billboards from the Foundation for Biomedical Research that were up around Seattle, among other cities, in April during World Week for Animals in Laboratories.

PETA had intended to have these ads on outdoor billboards within downtown Seattle, but Clear Channel, the company that owns the billboards–and ran the ads in favor of animal experimentation by FBR–rejected them. Instead, the ads will be featured on mobile billboards and on top of gas pumps.

This campaign launched in April during WWAIL in Raleigh-Durham, N.C,  and also targeted other cities such as Boston and Los Angeles, who have prominent research universities that have heavily-funded animal experimentation centers. Seattle was chosen because of the number of animal laboratories within the city, many of them owned and operated by the University of Washington, who is one of the top recipients in the US for government-issued grants for animal experiments; $225 million of public money funded experiments on animals at the UW in 2010 alone.

The following are just three examples of the many experiments that have been conducted in Seattle:

• Rats who had their skulls cut open and their brains damaged were placed in boxes that shocked their feet in order to cause them to screech and induce fear in other rats who were forced to watch. They were then killed, and their brains were removed.
• Dogs had holes cut into their chests, had tubes inserted into their arteries, were forced to run on treadmills, and were then killed and dissected.
• In a sensory deprivation experiment, dozens of newborn monkeys were separated from their mothers, locked up alone in the dark, and forced to wear masks that allowed them to see only a display monitor. Three newborns died during the experiment; the others exhibited irreversible brain damage.

“Experimenters are raking in millions of dollars’ worth of public funds and using the money to cage, cut up, and kill animals,” says PETA Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. “Whatever their stated goals, experiments on animals are about misery, pain, and death, and compassionate people don’t want to support this—financially or in any other way.”

She adds, “We have repeatedly shown that the University of Washington has violated animal protection laws.  With these ads we are simply drawing attention to what is going on.”

Day of Mourning for Animals in Laboratories

Primate experiment performed to research psychological stress

Sunday May 29th will be the second annual Day of Mourning for Animals in Laboratories. Each year untold millions of animals suffer and die inside animal research laboratories; numbers are at best a guess as many types of animals used in laboratories are not required to have accurate counts. They undergo painful procedures such as burning, suffocation, intentional gunshot wounds,  drug overdoses, contraction of diseases, starved, implantations, invasive surgeries, and much more, with fatality as a result — or at the end of the experiment, simply killed outright as they’ve outlived their “usefulness.”

As the University of Washington is home to several animal research laboratories both inside the main campus proper and scattered throughout Seattle, the Northwest Animal Rights Network will conduct a walking funeral procession along University Ave and end with a vigil in front of the Health Sciences building, where many animals have died and continue to suffer.

The meeting/staging area will be at the corner of NE Campus Parkway and University Ave, after which the assembled party will walk up and down University Ave, then through campus to a resting point in front of the Health Sciences building where a vigil and memorial will take place. Black/mourning clothes are encouraged.

Please take a couple hours out of your time to join the procession and vigil to honor the deaths of innocent individuals who have never been paid their proper respect.

SUN MAY 29 1:00-3:00pm
Meet at NE Campus Parkway and University Ave
For questions/more info: info [at] narn [dot] org

Pro-Research Billboard Corrected

Improved billboard

As reported in our previous post Pro-Animal Research Billboard Offers False Choice, billboards by a national lobbing group for animal-based research have appeared across the country, with a few here in Seattle. An anonymous posting on a local news forum alerted us to the “improvement” of one of the billboards located near the UW campus, correcting the false dichotomy the billboard suggests exists. The web address of this site was added to the billboard, but no-one affiliated with this site was responsible for this action. The billboard, corrected on April 19, was subsequently replaced April 26 with an ad for a local radio station.

Take Action: Urge Congress to Support the Great Ape Protection Act

The Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act (H.R.1513/S.810) has been re-introduced in the 112th Congress. This bill will end the use of chimpanzees for invasive research procedures, shut down federal breeding programs, and release federally-owned chimpanzees to permanent homes in sanctuaries.

The United States is the last country to use chimpanzees in large-scale invasive experiments, and while chimpanzees are our closest genetic relatives, there is still enough substantial differences in physiology, genetics, and susceptibility to diseases to make them poor models in research. Millions of dollars wasted and decades of research with inconclusive results  have shown that the use of chimpanzees has not provided any advancement towards cures that human-based research has provided. There are over 500 chimpanzees that are federally owned, and by releasing them to sanctuaries, the Great Ape Protection Act will save taxpayers $20-25 million annually.

The bill has the leadership of Representative Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) as well as 42 cosponsors already signed on in the U.S. House, and Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Susan Collins (R-ME), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) in the U.S. Senate.

Please take a moment and send an automated letter to your Senators and your House Representative to encourage them to support an end to the confinement and suffering of chimpanzees being used in experiments. The letter is programmed to be directed to your legislators that represent you in your area, and has the option of using a pre-written request or one that you’ve written.  Encourage others you know to sign on as well. Thank you.

Cross-posted at the Blog of the Northwest Animal Rights Network

Companies That Supply Animals to UW

If you are a “researcher” at the UW you can pretty much order any kind of animal you want to perform your “research” on – just put your order in and they will deliver you your “subject” like they were delivering a pizza. Of course the poor animal has no idea what is in store for him when he gets to the lab; perhaps gassing, burning, poisoning, stabbing, injecting with cancer and other horrible diseases, to name a few procedures. These animals will live horribly isolated and painful lives at the hands of students, PhD candidates and animal techs before they are murdered and disposed of as “biological waste.” These animals are delivered to the Health Sciences Building and the South Lake Union Building. The Animal Purchasing Office can be reached at 206-543-0640.

Here are the list of companies that make their money off the backs of suffering animals. This list is taken from the Department of Comparative Medicine’s website; while not viewable to the general public, it is accessible by any UW employee, student, or faculty. Perhaps you can contact these companies and let them know what you think of their practices, and in addition, you can put in a Better Business Bureau complaint about them for engaging in animal cruelty.

Boyd’s Bird Co Inc
Bird, delivery Wednesday
509-332-3109

Charles D Sullivan Co Inc
Amphibian, delivery Tuesday/Wednesday
615-832-0958

Charles River Laboratories
Gerbil, Guinea Pig, Hamster, Mouse, Rat, delivery Wednesday
800-522-7287

Covance Research Products, Inc.
Dog, delivery Wednesday
269-375-0482 (MI) 804-492-4181 (VA)

Elm Hill Labs / Cady Ridge Farms
Hartley/Pigmented Guinea Pig, delivery Tuesday/Wednesday
800-941-4349
“Quality Guinea Pigs” We have a cartoon slideshow!

Featherland Farms
Fertilized Eggs, Day Old Chicks, delivery Wednesday
541-484-6511

Harlan Sprague Dawley
Hamster, Mouse, Rat, Rabbit, delivery Tuesday
800-793-7287

Jackson Labs
Mouse, delivery Wednesday
800-422-6423
Use our secure online order form!

JM Hazen Frog Co
Frog, delivery Tuesday/Wednesday
802-796-3472

Magnolia Bird Farms
Bird, delivery Thursday
714-527-3387
“If you are a pet bird owner who can no longer keep your bird, we would be interested in talking to you about purchasing it from you. We will find a new and loving home for your pet.” And what a loving home it’ll be!

Marshall BioResources
Dog, Ferret, Minipig, delivery Tuesday
315-587-2295
We’ve got Beagles!

NASCO West
Frog, delivery Tuesday/Wednesday
209-545-1600

Progressive Pig Farm
Pig, delivery Monday
425-481-0938

Q-Bar Farm
Pig, delivery Mon/Tues/Wed
503-864-3273

Rana Ranch Bullfrog Farm
Bullfrog, delivery Tuesday/Wednesday
208-734-0899
We promise that our bullfrogs won’t escape!

R&R Rabbitry
Rabbit (Housed at HR&T or Pickup Only), delivery Wednesday
360-652-7157
We offer recommendations on how much to inject!

Simonsen Labs
Mouse, Rat (Conventional Facilities Only), delivery Tuesday/Wednesday
408-847-2002

Sinclair Research Center
Minipig, delivery Wednesday
573-387-4400
“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

Taconic Farms
Mouse, Rat, delivery Wednesday
888-822-6642
We can do custom breeding!

Western Oregon Rabbit Co
Rabbit, delivery Wednesday
541-929-2245

WSU Swine Center
Pigs, delivery Monday
(phone number not listed)

Xenopus Express
Frog, delivery Wednesday
800-936-6787
You can dump stuff on frogs’ eyes!

Xenopus I Inc
Frog, delivery Wednesday
734-426-7763
“The Greatest Frog on Earth ™” Yes, we trademarked it!

Zebrafish International Resource Center
Zebrafish, delivery Tuesday/Wednesday
541-346-6028

Pro-Animal Research Billboard Offers False Choice

As part of a national advertising campaign funded by the Foundation for Biomedical Research to get public support on the side of animal research, these billboards have been placed here in Seattle as well as other cities like LA and Portland. The FBR is a PR division of the National Association for Biomedical Research, of which the University of Washington is a member. The timing of these billboards is interesting, as it seems they were put up to rally citizens to their side in the face of the upcoming World Week for Animals in Laboratories, a week of international rallies and activities to show opposition to the institutions that confine, torture, and kill animals in the name of “science.”

This ad campaign is grossly misleading, as it presents to the public a false dichotomy, an artificial either/or scenario that suggests that animals have to die in order to save humans. Their claim that animals are integral and absolutely necessary to find cures are belied by the fact that there are many medical foundations that are working on cures for diseases without the use animals in their research. In fact, the use of animals prolongs the development of adequate procedures and treatments; animal physiology is different from that of humans’, requiring that humans models be used anyway for a treatment to be ultimately approved. Researchers get more money in grants by conducting animal testing, so there is little incentive for successful results or solid scientific design. Much of the research continues to be funded despite being redundant or inconclusive. And the animals suffer through torturous procedures, poor conditions, and poor treatment, with countless animals dying as a result, and an innumerable amount killed.

Biomedical researchers try to convince us that knowledge gained from animal studies can be extrapolated to humans yet their scientific papers reporting the results of research repeatedly include a disclaimer warning about making such an assumption. The difference in animal and human physiology means that many results of animal experiments are found to be inclusive, not applicable to human modality, or unreliable. The Food & Drug Administration recently reported that of all the drugs that tested safe and effective in animal testing, 92 percent are found to be either unsafe or ineffective in humans. Even drugs approved by the FDA because it was deemed safe under animal research can prove fatal because not enough adequate human research was conducted; the FDA estimated that 27,785 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths between 1999 and 2003 occurred from the prescription arthritis drug Vioxx before it was recalled. How researchers can claim that animal research saves (human) lives is indicative of their own hubris and ignorance of the real consequences of their research.

Many effective non-animal methods are available, such as such as in-vitro cell and tissue cultures, micro-fluidic circuits, computer modeling, micro-dosing, the use of CAT, MRI, and PET scans, using human cadavers or organs, and clinical research. Extensive studies have to be conducted on humans regardless of the treatment or protocol anyway, so the use of animals can and should be skipped, which would allow the speedier development of treatments among human models.

The billboard also directs people to ResearchSaves.org, which offers an equally offensive command: “Against animal research? Please sign and submit this directive before you get sick or injured in order to insure you receive no medications, surgeries, treatments or disease therapies that have been tested or tried in research animals. “

The logic of this imperative relies on the same simplistic reductive binary thinking. Using the same logic, we can then ask people: Against Nazis? Then you can’t drive a Volkswagen Beetle, developed by Hitler’s engineers to be the Jeep of the German army during WWII. Nor can you drive a Ford, who financed the Nazi party and helped secure its start. Nor can you drive a vehicle from General Motors, who by the mid-30s was totally committed to large-scale war production in Germany, producing trucks, tanks & armored cars. Against war and US military aggression? Then you can’t use microwaves, fly in planes that use jet engines, or use the internet, all technologies developed in the theater of war. The price of living in a modern industrialized society is that all of us, regardless of our individual beliefs, benefit from many things that came into existence from actions or institutions that we would otherwise not support. The idea, then, of directing some of us to give up the benefits of modern society without asking the same of themselves is just an example of inflated self-importance.

This is, of course, aside the fact that their claim of the treatments we have now came about because of animal research. It’s more accurate to say that we have as many treatments we have despite animal research. Human testing has always been the last line of research; animals are used initially simply because of economics. And because they are viewed as mere property, conditions to ensure their care are routinely neglected or circumvented, and less stringent oversight is given to invasive procedures. Every day, hundreds of lives are lost in service of projects that have seen no measurable progress; if cures are actually found, foundations, institutions, and researchers would lose valuable grant money. In the most cynical fashion, they sacrifice the lives of animals in pursuit of money, while telling the public that this circular game is necessary, using images of innocent children to win sentimental support.

The real answer to the question “Who would you rather see live?” is quite simple: both.

And it is possible and being proven every day among responsible researchers. Three U.S. agencies aim to end the archaic practice of animal testing, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Toxicology Program and the National Institutes of Health, realizing it is ineffective and wasteful. Non-animal-based research also is more ethical, as it doesn’t have the moral dissonance of taking one life in order to save another. One can only imagine how much further along the road to finding cures we would be if we hadn’t wasted billions of dollars, hours, and lives on animal testing that has proven unreliable or inconclusive. Animal research doesn’t save lives. It won’t save “her,” and we all know what happens to the “rat.”

Cross-posted at the Blog for the Northwest Animal Rights Network